If you see this man lurking on your doorstep in the upcoming weeks, no harm shall come to him! He is a federal employee in the performance of a constitutionally mandated mission — counting. When not counting, he is spelling. He is a simple man and his name is Matthew Lawrence.

This Monday is the third (or fourth, not clear on that) annual ‘Not About the Buildings’ Spelling Bee. This has been a lot of fun in the past — costs only $5 to participate and nothing to watch. Mr. Lawrence is the Master of Ceremonies, and is very good at this sort of thing it turns out. Go cheer on or (lightly) heckle your friends. Better still, put your money where your mouth is and get up on that stage and compete. I’m pretty sure you just head over and sign up (although I think it will be limited to a manageable number, which I don’t know what that is right now). Great prizes, honor, glory, and a crown.

It’s a Providence Phoenix Editor’s Pick. Learn more about Not About The Buildings. Remember, there’s prizes. . . and a crown.

9pm, Monday, AS220, 115 Empire Street

This is something of a ’save the date’ notification. Not About the Buildings is holding its Fourth Annual Spelling Bee on Monday, June 21st, from 9pm to 11-ish.

Not About The Buildings’ most popular event is also our biggest fundraiser. 36 spellers will compete for fame and glory and fabulous prizes, but even non-spellers can win big by betting on the right speller. Prizes to be announced soon. Sign up at the door. $5 to compete, free to watch.

Droll Dose contributor and resident Eurovision aficionado, Matthew Lawrence, is the perennial Master of Ceremonies. He has a particular white summer suit he breaks out for the occasion — very dapper. The event will be held at AS220. For all the details, and to rsvp, go to Facebook. Too chicken to participate? Sit in the audience and kibbitz. . . kibitz. . . drink. (Note to Matthew: Just skip the Yiddish.)

[Scripps National Spelling Bee is being broadcast on ABC television, tonight Friday, 8pm to 10pm]

Ever dreamed of churning out your life story but never had the time?

Your problems will be solved tonight at the Providence Athenaeum, where a roomful of people will get thirty minutes to write their story in 200 words or less.  Everybody can, if they want to, read their story out loud afterwards and, if you want, your stories will be archived at the Athenaeum and on the Not About The Buildings website.  Micro-Memoir!’s co-presented by the Athenaeum and Not About The Buildings; the first one we did in March was actually amazingly fun, though I suppose I am sort of biased about these things.

It’s all ages; at the last one we had high school kids and senior citizens and people from every decade in-between.  The action starts at 5:30, but the space opens at 5 for wine and snacks.  And, of course, since it’s a library you can show up even earlier than that.

Providence Athenaeum
251 Benefit Street
Friday, 5:30pm
free

This Thursday, the Providence Athenaeum and Not About The Buildings are teaming up to bring you Micro-Memoir!, a lightning-fast event where people write really short memoirs (and read them aloud) in just two hours.  Hosted by Karen Donovan, founding editor of Paragraph magazine and artist-in-residence at the Athenaeum, the event is free and open to the public.  All ages are encouraged to attend, so feel free to bring your very young or very old friends and relatives.

Thursday, March 25
251 Benefit St.
5:30pm

Our very own Annie Messier’s “Notes from a Seven-Year Study of the Domestic Short-Haired Feline” won the Not About The Buildings Writing Prize last month, and copies of the story are (finally) available for you to buy.  It was published in a limited run of 50 chapbooks. You can pick it up now at Ada Books (717 Westminster St) or the AS220 Project Space (95 Mathewson). Or, if you hate supporting local businesses, you can also buy it online.

The story, it should be noted, would make a great stocking-stuffer or present for your favorite book lover/cat lover/book-loving cat lover.  And it’s only seven dollars, which is even more exciting.

Tomorrow night at the Providence Athenaeum, I’ll be hosting the prize reading for the Not About The Buildings Second Annual Writing Prize. In a crazy turn of events that seriously had nothing whatsoever to do with me, the prize was awarded (by an outside judge who blind-read the entries and lives halfway across the country) to the Daily Dose’s own Annie Messier.

The event starts at 7 and also features Allen Kurzweil, novelist and children’s book author. He’ll be reading from a forthcoming memoir. It’s free to attend.

(Although I can’t believe we’re competing with an anti-Carcieri vigil! Uggh.)

There’s just two days and three hours and four minutes left to submit your entry for the Second Annual Not About The Buildings Writing Prize.  (FYI: since entries need to be received–not postmarked–by 11:59 Thursday evening, the ideal way to send your best 5000-word-or-less piece of non-fiction is via e-mail.)

More about the prize–and about Not About The Buildings–here*.  Key points you should know are: 1) The winning piece will get published as a limited-edition chapbooks; 2) The chapbook will be released next month at the Providence Athenaeum; 3) Anne Elizabeth Moore is judging the entries.

(*I run Not About The Buildings.  Sorry if any one thinks I’m going to be a glory hound by posting about myself.**)

(**I’ll be posting about myself again tomorrow.  Sorry in advance.)

We’re now halfway through the Summer Readathon that Not About The Buildings* organized for the local chapter of Books Through Bars. The miserable weather we’ve had has actually been ideal for the twenty-one volunteer readers, each of whom is raising money by sitting home with their nose in a book.

For every title they read between now and Labor Day, more money will go to shipping books to some of the two million people currently in the American prison system.  In Rhode Island, prison libraries are required by law.  (Not to say that the collections are great, or that they’re even staffed all the time.  But still.)  But in some states, privately-run jails don’t have libraries at all, making prison book programs like BTB really crucial.

Sponsoring is easy.  Just go to the Not About The Buildings website, pick your favorite reader, and then decide how much you’d like to sponsor them for.  Donations so far range from $.25 per book to $10 per book, so it’s not really that much of a financial commitment if you don’t want it to be.  And all the money raised will go directly toward the cost of mailing books to prisoners.

Just a little heads-up on an upcoming event I organized:  Not About The Buildings is holding a summer Read-A-Thon to benefit the Providence chapter of Books Through Bars.

Basically, a bunch of people have volunteered to read books over the summer, and we’re looking for people who want to sponsor them.  It’s sort like one of those charity bike races where you donate a certain amount of money for every mile the person rides, only without any of that pesky physical activity.  There’s 11 readers currently signed up and there should be a couple more by this weekend.  Visit the website, choose your favorite reader, and then follow the instructions on how to become a sponsor.  If you donate $1 per book, and they read a book a week, that’s $10 by Labor Day, which will go directly to Books Through Bars.

In case you didn’t know, Books Through Bars sends books to some of the two million people that are currently in prisons across the country.  They get about a hundred requests a week from prisoners, many of whom are in facilities that don’t have libraries.  Unfortunately, shipping is expensive, and they’re having trouble keeping up with all the requests, so anything you can donate would be a great help to them.

Tonight at Ada Books, celebrate the end of winter and St Patrick’s Eve with a marathon reading of James Joyce’s snowy story “The Dead.”  It’s long for a short story but short for anything else, so it’s not a major time investment, as far as marathon readings go.  And, as an extra bonus, it’s hosted by moi.

If you can take a break from your pre-game car bombs, you should stop by and read a few pages. (And get there early if you haven’t been to Ada lately, since their collection of small-press publications is getting pretty impressive.)

Ada Books
717 Westminster St.
(on the same block as White Electric)
7 pm
free

News flash!  I’ve got a new blog, for people that prefer reading books to reading things on the internet.

(Of course, that sounds like something I’m totally unqualified for, judging from the fact that I have like thirty-six blogs and I spend all day reading Go Fug Yourself and following Kristin Hersh’s Twitter.  But it’s not true!  I read books, too!  Sometimes!)

Anyway, the blog is here.

But I’ll still be writing for the Dose.  Fret you not.

This isn’t for a week-and-a-half yet, but I know how busy you all are, particularly on Mondays in the middle of March.  But prepare to take off your winter hat and put on your tam o’shanter because winter is (at least technically) ending soon and Saint Patrick’s Day is fast approaching.

On March 16th (St. Patrick’s Eve), I’ll be hosting The Dead-In at Ada Books, wherein I’ll mumble a few words about James Joyce before everybody launches into an out-loud reading of Joyce’s long short story/short novella.  It’ll be  a festive, though moody, way to say goodbye to winter and celebrate possibly the greatest short story to ever come out of Ireland.

(And not to be Johnny Own-Horn-Tooter, but the marathon reading of Ethan Frome that I did at the same time last year was lots of fun.  I can only imagine that this one will be better, since people don’t generally have a deep-seated dread of “The Dead” the way they do with Ethan Frome.)

Ada Books
717 Westminster St
7 pm
free.

I just announced the winner of Not About The Buildings’ first-ever fiction prize over at the website. (Actually, I posted the winner on the website on Monday, then got too busy to send the e-mail announcement, and then didn’t want to announce it yesterday because I figured all of America was thinking about the election. So, belatedly, I’m announcing it now.) The winner is Providence’s own Emily Brown, a children’s librarian whose story, How To Kill A Rattlesnake, beat about forty other entrants for the award. Judge Rachel Cohn called it a great story with an original voice.

The story’s going to be published and sold around town for the holidays, and everyone you know would reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally love getting it for the holidays. Well, up to fifty people you know, anyway, because it’s a super-limited edition that I’m hand-pressing myself. The cover may or may not look like the picture on the right there.

Next Monday, join library-loving nerds and fans of grueling competition at the second annual Not About The Buildings Spelling Bee.  It’s five dollars to enter but free to watch, and the watching’s going to be good, if last year’s Bee at Firehouse 13 is any indication.  It’s hosted by little ol’ moi and starts at 8.  You can sign up at the door or ahead of time.  It’s five dollars to enter but free to watch/cheer/heckle. Here’s the poster, designed by the dashing Jason Tranchida.